Links, 9.27.10

October is around the corner, and with it the holidays and assorted scheduling madness. Really, the whole year goes to pot starting on Halloween, or so the Archaeologist feels in her gloomier moments. That Motivation Monday meme (courtesy of Dionne at Finding Josephine) is looking pretty crucial these days. In other news:

Problems: A Washington Post update on problems with burials at Arlington National Cemetery reports that progress has been made in rectifying burial mixups with the help of paperwork reviews and radar technology. But, discouragingly, the record-keeping issues remain unresolved.

Visuals: The Nova Scotia Archives has released “Nova Scotia in Film, 1917-1957″, a collection of vintage films. There are scenic beauties, but also historical events such as the aftermath of the 1917 Halifax explosion. The archives has set up a YouTube channel for convenient viewing.

Surveying: In other Irish news, an impressive graveyard survey is underway in Donegal by a private firm, Irish Graveyard Surveyors Ltd. They plan to launch a website with graveyard data next year. It will be interesting to see how this pans out for researchers. The article did not mention subscription fees, but said the company hopes to sell advertising space to the funeral trade.

Graveyard Beat: It is always nice to share stories of neglected cemeteries with happy endings. This week, two run-down cemeteries found champions, in Baltimore and Chicago. … At the Providence Journal, columnist Mark Patinkin writes the kind of slice-of-life piece that you don’t see so much nowadays, a bittersweet profile of a woman’s weekly visits to her relatives’ graves at a local cemetery.